Saw this today and now I’m reconsidering if Boost is right for me. I’m really hoping this is shitty boiler plate that was accidentally copied and over looked because that is some bullshit to say “unless we decide we want to use your personal data for whatever we want”.
I know “legitimate interest” is a phrase from the cookies law but there is no legitimate interest justification for this. My data is my data and I decide who has a legitimate interest in it so advertisers can fuck off, as can Boost if this the direction it’s going.
Edit to say this blew up. I didn’t realise I was kicking as big a hornet’s nest and haven’t read all the comments yet.
To be clear, what I don’t like about this and other provisions in the terms is the language and implications around data use. I’ve no problem with ads being shown - I want developers to get paid for the work they do and that makes it possible for users to have “free” access to software if they can’t afford to purchase.
I also want to add the response from Boost’s dev below to make sure it’s visible. You’ll see that it is boilerplate but required by Google and was present in Boost for reddit. I just hadn’t seen it because I purchased it immediately based on a recommendation. It doesn’t make me happy about it but does remove some doubts I was having about the direction Boost is heading.
I will be purchasing the app to support the dev because I do like Boost but I understand not everyone can afford everything so you’ll see some other suggestions in the comments below that don’t have any ads if you’re not happy with the free version and ads with their associated loss of data privacy.
Dev here.
The dialog and its content is not created by me, it is a standard solution from Google to comply with GDPR and other laws. More info here: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/10114014?hl=en
The consent dialog is also required by Google AdMob to show ads, and it is shown when the ad network is initialized.
When the app launches, first it checks for the remove ads purchase, and if it is not present, it will initialize the ads sdk. The ad network is not initialized if the remove ads purchase is detected.
Boost for Reddit was using the very same ad networks and consent dialog.
To steel-man this argument, it’s really “Free software supporters are too hostile and demanding, and they’ll scare off developers.”
I have seen no evidence of this happening. Instead, there’s a huge number of Lemmy clients, both open and closed source. I have at least half a dozen installed on my phone, and that’s not even all of them! Compare that to the number of Mastodon clients.
Great. Let me know how many are still around in a year when people realize they’re working for free, and can’t keep doing it.
Mods on Reddit work for free, and have worked for free, for over a decade. They’re still working for free. Same with admins on Lemmy. Not everything is profit-driven.
Reddit mods are paid in control. They get to feel big and important.
I mean shit, toxic ass mod team of /r/Android was late to Lemmy, and is trying their hardest to maintain control over here. They made an agreement with the original lemmy.world android community to shut down and redirect the traffic to their lemdro.id instance.
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world resurrected it.
So that’s a pretty bad comparison in my opinion.
One minute I was here promoting a movie, the next minute I was top mod of a community of smartphone enthusiasts.
I’m still not quite sure how that happened.
You’re implying two things: 1) They don’t realize that they’re working for free now (lol), and 2) They won’t be able to keep doing it (for some unknown reason).